One of my favorite summer drinks was this rosemary lemonade. Since we don’t have Country Time (and maybe that’s a good thing), I decided to give it a whirl and make this fancier, adult version. Surprisingly easy. I made it for friends that visited and they were all impressed, so I knew I had a winner.

3. Strain the liquid to remove the rosemary. Pour into glasses, filling about 1/3 of the glass. Fill another third with vodka (or water) and the final third with tonic. Add fresh rosemary and lemon slices as garnish. Enjoy!

I’ve been really sick since Thursday. No idea why and just trying to rest so I don’t aggravate my throat more than it already is. Haven’t lost my appetite though. And (Thank heavens), haven’t lost my sense of taste. In my opinion, that is one of the very worse effects of a bad cold. Enough about that. This afternoon, Jaro made (I know, Jaro again! He’s been a busy chef this week.) Vietnamese chicken soup that I made way back here. But since he knows I don’t mind mixing flavors, (especially when garbage day is tomorrow and we want to use up everything we can), we also had prosciutto, arugula and, wait for it, raspberry jam on a baguette. I had seen something similar with fig jam on Pinterest recently, so figured this was a close enough substitute. You might think it’s crazy, but don’t knock it til you try it! So delicious. And that’s not my messed up, cold-ridden taste buds talking- Jaro gave it a thumbs up too.

So yeah, Jaro has basically been Iron Chef these days. I love that man.

And I’m getting used to the sound of him sharpening our knives every night…

Chorizo & egg is a traditional breakfast dish in many Mexican homes. My grandma would make it for us all the time when we were growing up. It was always one of my favorite meals. Still is. Jaro and I continue to share this spicy breakfast with our families and many, many friends. (Just ask anyone who spent the night with us back in Chicago). We make it “taco style” since I love my corn tortillas. We used to have them all. the. time. when we lived in Chicago because the chorizo and tortillas were always fresh. As you might expect, corn tortillas are hard to come by in Amsterdam. Maybe because we’re 4000 miles away? Luckily for me, Jaro has been rather ambitious in the kitchen lately… He made (!) homemade chorizo and homemade white corn tortillas. Check it out, they tasted amazing!

Chorizo recipe here and corn tortilla recipe here. Mix the chorizo with egg, throw some tomato and avocado on top, and give it a squirt of Cholula sauce. Just don’t get it in your eye. Trust me.

The other night, we needed something super simple to make for dinner and when that’s the case I always turn to my roots. My Mexican roots. Taco night it is. I had bought (bleh) flour tortillas just in case, but Jaro had the crazy notion recently to MAKE corn tortillas at home. He found a recipe that made it seem so easy. Yeah right. Anyway, we found the corn flour and he spun his magic. I think they turned out all right…

A little thick, a little rough and a little… blue. But they were good. We’ll He’ll be trying it again. Corn tortilla recipe here.

As promised, I’m going to get back into sharing some of the divine foodstuffs we create. And I have to tell you guys, we reached a new level in our kitchen today:

We were so inspired from the countless plates of trofie with pesto that we had in Cinque Terre, that we… that’s right, we made our own pasta. From scratch. For the first time. Ever. According to the recipe website, the only place you can get trofie is the Liguria region unless you make it yourself. So – We went from this:

To this:

Yeah, yeah. We decided to pull out the nice china and even had some champagne to celebrate this occasion. And why not? It looks good right?

Clearly, we are no food photographers (might be a worthy class to look into?), so I’m sorry if this doesn’t appear as mouth-watering as it was. Trust me, it was delicious. We even made the pesto from scratch and (unnecessarily) added shrimp to get some, you know, protein or whatever shrimp provide. Super straight forward but exhausting recipe here.

Made this looker recently based on a recipe I had talked about here. Instead of rigatoni, I used whole wheat penne. Much healthier and you can’t really taste the difference! I just notice the texture is a little different in whole-wheat pasta, but that is not a big deal. Also, I jazzed this up with some sauteed mushrooms & green beans and some shredded roasted chicken. Roasted chicken sounds fancy, but it isn’t. Trust me. All I did was throw it (“it” being three whole chicken breasts) in a baking dish, coat with olive oil, red pepper flakes, S&P, and lemon slices. Then, you bake it for about 45 minutes at 160 Celsius. Viola. Finito. This is a good meal to make a huge batch of and then eat for lunch for the next day rest of the week!

You want a good plate of spaghetti and meatballs? Look no further. We use the (in)famous Scott Conant’s recipe for his mouth-watering Scarpetta spaghetti. You can check out a pretty good adaptation of the recipe here. It all comes down to the ingredients. As in, they better be the freshest of fresh. We took it a step further and even used fresh, handmade spaghetti noodles found at our Noordermarkt, but that’s your call. Just don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.

As far as those huge balls of meat, we like (who is surprised) Giada’s recipe found within here. They are each stuffed with a perfect oozing cube of mozzarella. Do yourself a favor and make sure that is fresh too. You won’t regret it!

Amsterdam is known for its constant rain, so a good way to combat the winter blues? A hearty soup! I sort of made this up as I went along, but basically boiled vegetables (hearty ones like carrots, celery & onions) in chicken broth and in a separate pot, boiled pieces of chicken in water. Once both were done, I threw the chicken in the soup and used its water to boil vermillion (you can sub this for rice noodles) and added that to the rest once it was cooked. Go ahead and salt & pepper to your own taste (for me, a lot). For garnish on top, I added cilantro, mint, bamboo sprouts and a squirt of lime juice. The lime juice is essential! It really gives the dish its Asian flair.